After watching mages in the level 70 bracket, I’m kinda torn about what I want to do next.

On the one hand, still having a lot of fun on Ashwalker.

On the other hand, she’s fun but I’m at the point of grinding out things (professions, etc) on her, and that’s kinda boring. If 70 is her final cap (which I haven’t decided yet), then there’s a lot of things to do – but I’ve got the itch to level other characters now, too.

Damnit, itches!

I bring up mages because I don’t have one, and that’s kinda weird given how good I am at playing one at low levels. My first twink was a mage twink (and I loved her) – but I ended up deleting her. I had a level 10 mage, she was an awesome twink – but I deleted her, too.

And Mages look like they’re awesome fun at level 70. I believe the kids these days call them “OP,” which I think means ohmygoodness pewpew or something like that.

I kinda want a mage. But I don’t know what to roll. Or even if I should roll, or if I should resurrect one of my deleted twinks and start off with some HKs and achievements, if nothing else.

So I’m sitting here, trying to figure out what to roll, or if I want to roll, and I start making a chart in my notebook (above). Who do I have right now? What are my preferences, really? What do I really want to roll?

See, Dechion had a neat post up about racial preferences this morning that got me thinking. Do I prefer a given race, or not? I have a lot of Humans, and now I have a little cluster of night elves – what happened to all the gnomes and draenei? What about Horde? I’ve only really played two races with any seriousness – tauren and blood elf – what would I like to roll, if given the chance?

Maybe if I look at what I’ve got, I can figure this out.

Looking at the toons I’ve managed to get above 50 and not delete, I’ve got 5 alliance and 1 horde toon. That’s not a lot of red team coverage, is it. If I was going to level to see new things, leveling Hordeside probably is a good idea. But then there are server issues, heirloom issues, and getting lost going everywhere issues. I could do it without heirlooms or gold, but… I mean I have 20k gold sitting on an empty Horde server. I should probably use it for more than vanity outfits for my level 54 priestess.

So I started scribbling notes. What don’t I use? What don’t I roll, class and race wise, that maybe I should?

Then I hit upon a field that I wasn’t sure I should include: PURPOSE. Yikes. Why does this character exist? What’s their primary purpose? WHY DO I NEED YOU?

For Cynwise, she’s the one I want to experience the endgame with. Cynwulf? Let’s be frank, he’s a gathering toon right now. My druid is also a gatherer, but could be a PvP twink. (I think it would be better to relearn the class from the ground up, though.) Ash? PvP twink for 70 for now, maybe leveling up to 85 for professions? Cynderblock? 19 twink.

I’m struck by how hard it can be to say, this is your primary purpose, toon. You exist so I can do X with you. If two things can do X, that’s wasted effort.

Then there are professions, the last refuge of a leveled character! If you’re not going to be my endgame character, maybe you can provide me with a maxed profession!

Except… I think I’d rather keep people at level 70 to PvP right now, and that only gets you to 450 professions. Man. 😦

Okay, races, maybe I can make some headway with races! What would I like to play? Well, it all depends. The more I look over the list the more I want to change it. Should I try for maximum spread of races? (If so, I should race change my druid.) Or should I say, you know, I really like playing humans, what’s wrong with rolling another 4 or 5?

This is actually relevant to the Mage discussion, because if I am okay with a human or spacegoat, I should just get a GM to undelete the toon and save myself a few hours of work.

Do other people go through this when deciding how to scratch the alt itch? I’ve done it both ways – sometimes I sketch out what I have (like here), sometimes I just load up the character selection screen and see what I end up making.

7 responses to “On Trying To Figure Out What The Heck To Roll Next”

I’ve done the spreadsheet thing a couple of times, but usually I just sit there staring at the character creation screen fiddling around with different options. If I have something special in mind, then I start with that, otherwise I just keep on fiddling with it until something sticks out to me.If I were in your shoes, considering a Mage twink, it would go something like this:-What spec? Arcane or Frost for me-Any races help those specs in particular? BElf helps Arcane with mana from arcane torrentOrc helps Frost with extra damage from Fury, also +Pet damageTroll helps both with haste from BerserkGoblin helps both with passive haste, rocket jump very handyUndead recovers well post-combat with cannibalism, WotFGnome helps Arcane slightly with larger mana pool, EAGoat Hit can be handy, GotN is handy but slow Worgen helps both with Crit, Dark Flight is handyNight Elf extra dodge is good, Shadowmeld is pimp (SURPRISEPEWPEW!)Human is boring, but EMFH is EMFHDwarf stoneskin is great for anti-rogueIt’s a twink, right? If so you need to maximize. Goats aren’t bad, but they’re far from great so scratch that. Human is cool, frees up that trinket, so you might consider it.The best option depends on the spec you’re shooting for most often and how you want to play them. Night Elf surprise burst from shadowmeld can be cool and all, but if you’re never going to be in an ambush situation then it really doesn’t matter. BElf has one of the most useful racials overall with both silence and mana return, but the Goblin’s rocket jump can be crazy good in PvP, especially combined with Blink. Orc and Troll can both give you more burst, but are you looking for more offense or more defense? Personally, I’d go Goblin or Human.

Well, I ended up deleting a crapton of alts and rolling a Goblin Mage on Drenden. I have a belf Mage on Medivh, too. I had a good time on Ashwalker last night in PvP. That helped quell my “OMG I NEED A MAGE AT 70 STAT” urges… though I still got owned by any and all mages who came by. Psyn, hard to believe it’s been 2 weeks since you and Fyn last logged in.

I usually don’t get the itch to just roll a new alt; I get the itch to roll a new class. I’ll sit and think “Gee, I want to learn discipline.” so I’ll roll a new priest-not that I have, um, six priests on four different servers or anything *sheepish*. Since rolling my main priest a year and a half ago, all my toons have been female (save a tiny little dorf shaman on Proudmoore that’s level 2 and staying there–I can’t in good conscience play Alliance toons anymore), so that’s not a consideration. The only real consideration is race, and then the only consideration is which starting area annoys me the least. If I ever have to look at Kezan again I’m going to go postal, so goblins are out. I think the new troll starting area is an absolute win on Blizzard’s part, so my baby discipline priest is a troll.

I have tried a bit of everything and have resolved myself to the fact that I play caster classes. One thing I would really like to try though is to roll on a PvP server. Although the content is the same I would guess that the dynamic of how you do things is very different.

@Cyn we logged in a couple of weeks ago, but we haven’t actually played in just over 6 weeks.@Stormy I’m with you on Kezan. As much fun as that place was the first time around, there’s almost no replay value at all for that zone and the fact that you’re locked in only makes it worse. The same is true for Worgen, but it’s not /quite/ as bad for me, personally…yet.

My goals with alts have always been pretty straightforward:Roll what I haven’t already experienced. For example, I rolled a troll shaman back at the end of Wrath because a) I had never played a troll, b) I had never played a shaman, and c) I wanted to see the Horde perspective before Cataclysm came along and reworked it all. I rolled a Worgen rogue when Cataclysm hit because they were the only available class and race that I hadn’t already rolled.

About CWM

Cynwise's Warcraft Manual is a weblog about many facets of the World of Warcraft: PvP battlegrounds, digital avatars, warlock theory, and having fun with alternate play styles are common topics.